Anti-McConnell Democrats finally cross the line

PageOne Kentucky is reporting that an anonymous person or group has prepared flyers making an allegation that U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell was discharged from the Army for being gay.

Ever since 1984, when McConnell first won his Senate seat by ousting incumbent Democrat Dee Huddleston, his opposition has spread the rumor that McConnell is a homosexual. The whisper campaign has taken flight every time McConnell has been up for re-election, no doubt because no one would ever mistake Kentucky's senior senator for John Wayne or Clint Eastwood or whatever other symbol of masculinity you want to offer up.

This is the first time, however, that the rumor has been put in print and plans made to publicly distribute it.

It's probably a good thing that the producer(s) of this flyer is/are anonymous, because the allegations here open him/her/them up to a libel suit. Should the identity of the flyer's publisher(s) become known, McConnell would have no trouble meeting the standard for a public figure to bring a libel suit. There's definitely malice here, and information made public to date indicates McConnell was honorably discharged for an eyesight problem, making the accusation in the flyer false.

We don't pretend to be fans of McConnell anymore. We think policy-wise he's been a good senator for Kentucky, and his leadership status is good for Kentucky, but he's forevermore on our "crap list" because of his shameful abandonment of Ernie Fletcher when the Democrats were in full attack mode during Fletcher's term as governor. However, we are fans of the truth and we don't think it's right for hurtful personal lies to be so blatantly injected into the campaign.

Not that we believe McConnell is gay, but we find the tactic of involuntarily "outing" folks who want to keep their sexual preference a secret to be very distasteful. And we especially don't like blatant lies to be anonymously passed along to social conservatives who make up much of McConnell's base.

We hope McConnell discovers the identity of the lowlife(s) responsible for this, and he/she/they lose everything they own in a libel judgment. It would serve them right for this particular excursion into gutter politics.